Finally, a brave bishop breaks ranks

''I find these files [about priests who sexually abused children] to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.''

These are the words, last Thursday, not of a victim nor an advocate, a lawyer, policeman or judge. They are the words of Los Angeles Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez. Of themselves, they are perhaps franker than the usual church apology, but what made them really remarkable is what came next.

His motives may be mixed, his actions tardy, but even if it is only a gesture it is a remarkably powerful and significant one. He has set a stunning example of what accountability might look like.

''My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties.'' In a striking and unprecedented humiliation of the cardinal, Archbishop Gomez also had Mahony’s former right-hand man in handling abuse allegations, Thomas Curry, resign as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

For the first time, one bishop held another – a cardinal, indeed – accountable over abuse and acted against him. On the same day that Gomez dropped his LA bombshell, I outlined in The Age some of the reasons people have felt cynical about church promises of transparency and co-operation with the two Australian inquiries into how the churches dealt with clergy child sex abuse.

Advertisement

Several witnesses to the Victorian inquiry said the local dioceses were controlled by the Vatican, which had a history of privileging canon (church) law over secular laws. The Vatican has been slow to grasp the issues, largely thanks to the previous Pope John Paul II – a colossus when it came to courage against communism but a pygmy in fighting abuse.

Like many, I believe real progress requires cultural change in the church, which means a measure of recognition in the Curia (church officialdom) of its own flaws, a probably insoluble catch-22. As noted Vatican watcher John Allen has said, real power in the Vatican is exercised by at most a couple of dozen elderly men, largely secluded, who are unmoved by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle.

Ironically, in a novel by long-term Vatican correspondent Robert Blair Kaiser, Cardinal Mahony is the hero who introduces radical progressive changes. Nice idea, wrong hero – though Mahony has advocated immigration rights, winning him the gratitude of the Latinos who make up 40 per cent of Los Angeles' 4 million Catholics.

Mahony's plaintive reply to Gomez is that his response evolved over time, making Los Angeles ''second to none in protecting children'', and that Gomez, who replaced him in 2011, never previously raised any questions.

The files Gomez cited became public last week by order of a secular court: 124 of them, of which 82 detail allegations of child abuse. They contain 12,000 pages of letters, memos and other documents that show Mahony moved predators out of parishes, or the diocese, or even the country. One of the worse cases involved Father Jose Ugarte, who drugged and raped a boy in a hotel but was merely sent back to Spain for seven years and asked to find other employment.

Critics note that it took Gomez two years to reach his decision, made as the documents were released, although he must have been aware of what they contained far earlier. Would he have acted against Mahony without the court order? Perhaps not. The Vatican, seemingly stunned, has said it has no plans to comment but it must be severely embarrassed. Last year it ignored the criminal conviction of an American bishop, Robert Finn of Kansas, for protecting a priest with child pornography. Finn was left undisciplined in his diocese where he is now fulminating against the National Catholic Reporter for including ''Catholic'' in its title. Consistent priorities!

Meanwhile, although Mahony is humbled in LA, he remains a cardinal with several senior Vatican positions, which no one expects to change. The Pope knows he can't act against Mahony, in the unlikely event that he wants to, without also acting against vast numbers of senior prelates who did exactly the same thing with tacit Vatican approval.

But Gomez has exposed the Vatican's hand-wringing charade about abuse for what it is. Increasingly under scrutiny is the Catholic Church’s unhealthy clerical culture, which led it to protect the institution over its children. As the National Catholic Reporter editorialised, ''in their fierce allegiance to that exclusive club at all costs, in their willingness to preserve the facade of holiness and the faithful's high notion of ordination, [the bishops] lost sight of simple human decency and the most fundamental demands of the gospel''.

Now Gomez has broken ranks. His motives may be mixed, his actions tardy, but even if it is only a gesture it is a remarkably powerful and significant one. He has set a stunning example of what accountability might look like.

Over to you: Was Archbishop Gomez right? Has he killed his chances of a red hat? How can the Vatican realistically respond? Is this a good model for the wider church? What next?

88 comments so far

As always thanks and well done Barney.If the sincerity and bravado of Jose Gomez is as I suspect to be believed, This may well prove to be groundbreaking in addressing abuse within the cloistered and hypocritical realms of The Vatican, The Church.When can we expect similar courage here in Australia?Whilst Pell continues to act as 'The spokesperson' much to the angst of senior bishops here, we will not progress in addressing the abuse.The RC will expose the protection rackets and the likes but until a bravado akin to Gomez steps forward there will be no real healing, recognised accountability or sincere justice.

Commenter

A country gal

Date and time

February 05, 2013, 11:36PM

It's a very far cry from Cardinal Pell's last media conference, isn't it. But I suspect that the lay council the church set up to interact with the royal commission was partly to remove the cardinal from the spotlight, and give media responsibilities to others. Time will tell.

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

February 05, 2013, 11:47PM

Cheers Barney, slightly off topic but having just read the article on the girls and women incarcerated to work in Irish Catholic laundries, they have concluded the apology of the govt as insincere, not enough.But the obvious omission was any form of apology from the church in the article.Whilst the state was complicent , once again Rome fails monstrously.It never ceases to amaze me how they can be so audacious.

Commenter

A country gal

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 10:17AM

@Barney

What you say about the removal of Pell is probably correct, but I fail to see how that can be achieved when Pell is so involved in so many cases.

I think Australia is either going to see a dozen or so different facets of Pell or we will suddenly hear he is now living in Rome, probably both.

Commenter

J. Fraser

Location

Queensland

Date and time

February 07, 2013, 3:23PM

Welcome back Barney.

This certainly seems decisive and commendable action.

It would be interesting to know if it has also been accompanied by reaching out to victims, more generosity in treatments etc i.e. measures that actually cost the church as a whole, rather than just individuals within it. Otherwise it could seem as driven by political ambition by the Archbishop (as you point out,mixed motives are perfectly acceptable in some cases, and I agree with this).

Do you know if this is the case, and/or what Gomez's critics claim?

Commenter

mike88

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 7:24AM

The critics point out that the diocese fought for five years in the courts NOT to have to publish the files, including two years under Gomez. The diocese paid out $660 million in a settlement with 500 victims as part of that judgment. Then they fought to redact the names of officials who covered up from the files, which they also lost. So it's no coincidence that Gomez has done this at the time of releasing the files. People speculate, probably rightly, that no files would have meant no action. They suggest that he would have been aware of the contents, at least to some extent, early in his time as archbishop, so why take two years? I believe I read somewhere that Gomez is an Opus Dei bishop.

All these criticisms are probably right. The National Catholic Reporter editorialised that there are no heroes in this account, not even Gomez. But, to me, that doesn't remove the enormous significance of what he has done. He has uncorked the genie. Things can never be the same again. Someone in the church has acted against a bishop, against the most powerful culture of all, which is the clerical culture. To me, it's a huge step forward.

Commenter

Barney Zwartz

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 7:32AM

Barney is exactly right. What Archbishop Gomez has done sets an example for what should be done and will have wide ramifications, perhaps on a par with those (but certainly more visible) that flow from pardoning Galileo.

On the other hand, that won't save his soul:

"The last temptation is the greatest treason,To do the right deed, for the wrong reason" T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.

Commenter

Greg Platt

Location

Brunswick

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 5:15PM

Barney - I don't see this case fitiing the headline in anyway

Are we to talk about the "Brave Lance Armstrong" who went on tv to admit guilt (after years of denials, court cases fighting to maintain the lie & after being found guilty & having all his results in both tours & olympics wiped)?

The Bishop you are calling brave continued to fight to not have files made public (sourcing your own story here) and then rolled over as the files are made public in what can be viewed as an effort to make him the hero, rather than just one of the many villians in the piece. Something he has obviously succeeded at, given your story.

Gomez deserves to be classed as a hero no more than someone such as Jack Herbert, from the Fitzgerald Inquiry - happily living the life & then rolls over to avoid more blame being placed on him.

Commenter

paully

Date and time

February 08, 2013, 7:41AM

Catholic history like the histories of other Abrahamic traditions suggests their cultures of internecine conspiracies, secrets, divided loyalties, factional machinations, intrigue, power mongering and general ethical cynicism may be an inevitable consequence of proslytizing wide scale philosophical fraud. Mr Gomez may be a just progressive in the eyes of some adeherents but on the other hand he may simply be a sign that some senior clerics think affirmative action, however late and desperate, is the only tool left for the one true church to slow its rapidly fading political significance. Will he get a red hat? I have no idea, but then who cares any more?

Commenter

Perk_Cartel

Location

Westgarth

Date and time

February 06, 2013, 7:43AM

I think an Opus Dei prelate would be surprised to be called progressive. I would like to think this was a matter of conscience, but I can understand anyone being cynical about that. Partly for reasons in my previous reply, to Mike88.

Subscribe to ITPro

Editor's Choice

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bolstered Malcolm Turnbull's ministerial duties, handing him greater responsibility for e-government in a push to expand the use of a single digital identity for Australians.

Data

The new roof that spans Margaret Court arena does more than keep out the weather. Built into the gantries that surround the sliding ceiling are Wi-Fi antennas that beam web access to every ticket holder.